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In the Launceston Library
A TALK ON AUSTRALIAN BOOKS
AND AUSTRALIAN READERS.
Monday’s Mercury contained a letter by a member of the
anonymous staff, who signed himself J.B. It contained an extract from what is
vulgarly called a "slating" critique of the poems of Essex Evans, a
critique which appeared in an English paper. Of the extract, the two or three lines
snipped and appended give a fair idea.
A full third of the “ Secret Key ” is mere thundering rant,
with no particular meaning, no sense of poetic style, only a delight in rapid
movement, as though the writer were gotten upon a pegasus, and galloped full
tilt, devil take the hindmost.
The reader will note that this is merely the abusive
outpouring of a literary back who expresses his contempt - real or affected - without
literary art of any sort. Iago was nothing if not critical, this man is nothing
if not dogmatic. And his dogmatism lacks distinction, it is the dogmatism of
the nobody. The somebody does very indifferently what the SATURDAY REVIEW in
its palmy days used to do very skilfully.
But why does J.B. quote this poor stuff, and thrust it on
the notice of Mercury readers, not one in a hundred of whom could tell you who
Evans is or what he has written? That is the question I asked myself as I lay
back in the Launceston express on Monday (1). Is it malice? Is J.B. a disappointed
poet, one whose still born verse no bilious writer in another hemisphere has
cared to scarify. For, after all, it is something to be abused 12,000 miles
from home : it signifies at least that one’s voice has been distinctly audible
at that distance. Perhaps so, for he opens his letter thus:
I have elsewhere called attention to the widely-exaggerated
estimate of our local verse on the part of a Sydney coterie, and their fierce
resentment of English criticism.
What is the Sydney coterie to J.B. unless it has flung his
epic or his lyric into the waste paper basket?
But the initials suggest Joe Bagstock, the famous Major of
Dombey and Son, who was wont to inform his friends “J.B is tough, Sir, tough and
devilish sly.” Is this J.B. sly: is his seeming attack on Mr Essex Evans a mere
puff in disguise. Anyway, it reminded me that recently, incited thereto by
favorable notices in the English press, I bought the “ Secret Key,” read it,
liked much of it, and proposed to review it. It reminded me also that a number
of us, shocked by the scant regard for Australian authors shown by the book
committee of our Public Library, had resolved to fill the blank on shelves
where seven volumes represent Australia’s poets and essayists of the 19th
century. And the next idea that occurred was that possibly the people of
Launceston were a little kinder to our poets from Harpur to Hebblethwaite, than
are our Hobart literary censors.
The Launceston Library is a big one. It has five and twenty
thousand volumes, whereas Hobart has but thirteen. The books make a formidable
array, completely lining the available wall space, and towering high above the
head of the would be reader. Of course, many of them are literary
ephemera—novels which had their day, and that a brief but not particularly
merry one—but with these there are a great many valuable books, and of those
latter not a few are up to date. Somebody displays considerable judgment in selection:
for example, to take the author who concerned me last, Charles Dickens; the
recent criticisms of the great novelist, works by Chesterton and Gissing were
there, and these in Hobart, one had to purchase.
But this is a digression and our main concern is with
Australian authors. Mr----- admitted that his committee has not impoverished
itself by spending excessive sums on local works. But, for all that, they are
better represented than in the Hobart library. There are some very curious gaps
in both collections, for example, of the three poets whom Sutherland and Turner
selected as our foremost, two — Kendall and Brunton Stephens—are missing. This
seems to me unpardonable, and to betray a lack of the literary sense. Poetry is
very largely a description and an interpretation of Nature, and in Australia
such description, if at all accurate, must create a language of its own. Fifty years
ago a shrewd observer noted this, and pointed out that right down to the leaves
of the gum trees, and to the whisper of the wind as it swept them, the sights
and sounds of the new world were unlike those of the old. But that does not trouble
your “superior” person of the merely booky sort. He is nothing if not
conventional. If the words which fall on his ear are euphonious, and are
sanctioned by long usage, such a trifle as that they have become wholly
inappropriate does not vex him.
We want an Australian literature, because neither nature nor
human nature at the antipodes are what they are — still less just what they
were — in London.
We enthuse a little insanely concerning our cricketers and
prize-fighters, we grow wholly mad in deification of our footballers, and we atone
for this by undervaluing our writers. Launceston is kinder to these last than
is Hobart, it has several volumes by Lawson, several by Paterson, several by
Steel Rudd. And Steel Rudd, the librarian tells me, is the favorite of the
subscribers to the Mechanics’ Institute. His books circulate constantly, and
are endorsed by those imprints so highly valued by all authors fortunate enough
to secure them—the thumb marks of the many. Then there are Gordon, Boake,
Dyson, Ogilvy, Green, Slade, and of course, Ada Cambridge aud Rolph Boldrewood,
whose novels find their way through Mudie’s into all the ordinary libraries.
There are two or three others. It is a rather larger and better selection than
we in Hobart have, but that is all it is possible to say.
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| NSW Bookstall Co. Ltd. (1920) |
The thing is the more curious in Launceston, as Mr
Pritchard, the editor of the Examiner, is occasionally guilty of verse, and is
not without a fellow feeling for more hardened rhymsters. On Monday he showed me
some fine verses for which he paid Mr Evans five pounds—a high price for a very
short poem “made in Australia.” He and Mr Balfe, of the Courier, have done what
they could to encourage the muses, and are fairly versed in Tasmanian verse. Neither
of them is to be reckoned amongst those whose literature, like the wine of the
connoisseur who affects the French vintage concocted in London, must be
imported.
And it is the more curious again, because the Launceston
Library is a business concern, and the book committees of such concerns usually
support the author whose books circulate merrily. There is, the librarian tells
me, a growing interest in Australian periodical literature. Some of that literature is very poor stuff, as most of the
stuff which appears in the STRAND, the WINDSOR, and the rest is. But it is
increasing in quantity and improving in quality, and will increase the faster if
Australian magazines are decently supported. Even the poet and the novelist
must keep the pot boiling, and whether they send copy to London, to Sydney, or
to Melbourne is, in the main, a matter of money.
That there are a number of reading people in Launceston is
clear. The Library has over six hundred subscribers, and has paid so well that £2000
is available for reconstruction, which will put all the books within reach of
the readers. The librarian and his assistant cater for the six hundred
subscribers to the circulating library, look after the two reading rooms - one
free, the other for members only, and they see to the letting of the hall. In
the annual report salaries are down for only £260, and the £260 is well-earned.
But to return to our text a little, Tasmania's coterie must do for Australian
literature what J.B.’s terrible “coterie in Sydney” is doing for it in N.S.W.
(The Critic, 2 Nov 1907, p4)
(1) Although this article appeared without a by-line, it is surely no coincidence that a review of "The Secret Key" appeared in the next issue of The Critic, contributed by Milner Macmaster, editor of The Critic at that time.
